Kamla: Tobago visit nothing to do with politics

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her vis­it to To­ba­go has noth­ing to do with pol­i­tics, even as the is­land heads to­wards an elec­tion.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing her first of­fi­cial vis­it to the is­land since be­ing sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter for a sec­ond term, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was asked by re­porters about claims that her trip was po­lit­i­cal­ly timed.

In­stead, she smiled and replied, “I’m a politi­cian.”

She then ex­plained that she came to ad­dress mat­ters that have now reached the na­tion­al agen­da.

“Cer­tain mat­ters we ad­dress in the House are long-stand­ing mat­ters that were not ad­dressed be­fore, but we have ad­dressed them to­day,” she said.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due no lat­er than ear­ly next year.

The last one took place in De­cem­ber 2021 and led to Far­ley Au­gus­tine be­ing elect­ed as Chief Sec­re­tary.

Dur­ing her vis­it, she at­tend­ed a spe­cial sit­ting at the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture Build­ing in Scar­bor­ough.

Out­side the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture Cham­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter added that progress for To­ba­go re­quires uni­ty and pa­tience.

“I think that our pa­tience is very im­por­tant to be able to rise. You can­not go sep­a­rate­ly; you have to go side by side. When To­ba­go ris­es, Trinidad ris­es. When Trinidad ris­es, To­ba­go ris­es.”

Dur­ing her one-day of­fi­cial vis­it, she de­scribed her time on the is­land as “ab­solute­ly mar­vel­lous. Ex­cep­tion­al­ly mar­vel­lous”.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment was fo­cused on gov­er­nance, not elec­tion­eer­ing. “What we are do­ing is en­sur­ing that peo­ple un­der­stand the is­sues be­fore them,” she said, not­ing that some of the poli­cies dis­cussed in To­ba­go have been years in the mak­ing.

She re­it­er­at­ed that her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­dress­ing con­cerns raised by To­bag­o­ni­ans through in­sti­tu­tion­al and leg­isla­tive chan­nels.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly must hap­pen.

“As I said, you can­not go this way. You have to go side by side. You can­not go this way. You have to go side by side,” she said.

Her state­ments came dur­ing her first of­fi­cial vis­it to To­ba­go as Prime Min­is­ter since tak­ing of­fice, where she met with lo­cal lead­ers and toured sev­er­al schools and com­mu­ni­ties in West To­ba­go. See page 9